Monday, November 8, 2010

Happy Birthday, Dad

Today is my Dad's birthday. If he had lived, he would be eighty-five. He always said that he would be an energetic old man, and greatly admired his uncle Kenneth, who lived a vigorous life right up until his death at age eighty-one. Unfortunately, this is not what happened. He suffered a stroke and his last years were lived in a greatly diminished capacity.

As the years have passed, the sadness of those days has eased. Most recently I've found myself thinking about my father as a young man, and even a young boy. This is partly because of watching Paul grown up and wondering what kind of man he will turn into. It's also partly because my brother, Jim, has been using Ancestry.com to make photos and stories about my father and other family members available to our far-flung family.

Here is my father at age three, with his whole life ahead of him.

He's a cutie, isn't he? At this age no one could predict that he'd excel in math, study engineering, marry at nineteen and become a father at twenty, have one career managing military motor pools and a second in the new field of computer programing, and eventually start his own one-man computer training company. Along the way he earned the Silver Beaver award for his volunteer contributions to the Boy Scouts, and was an active lay leader in the Mormon church. He also raised four children and to his last breath loved his wife of more than fifty years.

Most of us started out as little cuties with blank slates to write on. And we'll all in the end say goodbye to this world, hopefully having filled our slates and leaving behind at least a few people who remember us and miss us.

On my father's birthday, I remember him, I miss him, and I'm grateful for all I've learned from him, both in his life and after his death.

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